Significant research and development efforts are currently directed to designing and manufacturing nanoscale electronic devices. Nanoscale electronics promise significant advantages, including considerably reduced features sizes and the potential for self-assembly and for other relatively inexpensive, non-photolithography-based fabrication methods. However, the design and manufacture of nanoscale electronic devices present many new challenges when compared with the current state-of-the-art.
Studies of switching in nanoscale electronic devices have previously reported that these devices could be reversibly switched and had an “on-to-off” conductance ratio of approximately 104. These nanoscale devices may be used to construct crossbar circuits and provide a promising route for the creation of ultra-high density memory. A series connection of crossbar switches that can be used to fabricate, for example, latch circuit elements has also been demonstrated, which is an important component for logic circuits and for communication between logic and memory. New logic families that can be constructed entirely from crossbar arrays of resistive switches or as hybrid structures composed of resistive switches and transistors have been described. These new logic families have the potential to dramatically increase the computing efficiency of CMOS circuits, thereby enabling performance improvements of orders of magnitude without having to shrink transistors, or to even replace CMOS for some applications if necessary. Because nanoscale electronic devices offer an abundance of potential advantages, engineers and physicists continue to seek improvements in the performance and manufacture of these devices.